My Name is Trouble
by Andi Mack
Summary: Olivia Steele is stuck with an engagement ring from Hal, a man she's not in love with and Snake, a man who the doctors think is crazy. Pointless filler story. Read at own risk. !COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

_Okay, so this is one of those filler stories which means I wrote this to busy my brain because I didn't have any ideas for a REAL MGS story. I even resurrected my very dead original character, Olivia Steele, from my "Overpoured" story. It really is all over the place, whatever I came up with, I just wrote it. Everyone's out of character (except Olivia...she's always sharped tongued and bold) and the situations are all pretty far out. So, read it for what it is and if you like it, great. If not, well, I hope you were at least entertained._ _Oh yeah, the title "My Name is Trouble" comes courtesy of the band Nightmare of You who have a song of the same name. - Andi _

* * *

"Real life isn't like that."

Hal looked down at the body draped across his, moving in perfect time with the rise and fall of his chest. His hand was resting lightly on her bare arm, accidentally landing back there everytime she shifted her body in a way that required him to lift it. Her body softened and melded so flawlessly around his that the glow from the television set in front them lost the line that separated them, just as he had, and bounced off of them as a one complete entity.

He smiled. "Oh, yeah?"

She looked up at him as if she had heard it appear, her glasses encased green eyes transforming the scattering glow from the television into a radiant shimmer. "Yeah. First of all, no one kisses their significant other upon waking up. That's fairy tale stuff. I needed a cup of coffee, a cigarette and, depending on the night, an aspirin before I even acknowledged Evan properly."

"It's just a movie, Olivia."

"I know...but it's movies like that that gave me the wrong idea about what love and marriage would be like when I was a kid. No one tells you that when you get married you gain the uncanny ability to start an argument over an empty toilet paper roll left on the dispenser or a defiled jar of peanut butter. Instead, they show you this," she motioned to the television right at the man and the woman shared a deep and movie long pending kiss. "A perfect, mutual, well lit and angled kiss to have every little girl out there hoping and praying for their Prince Charming to give them one just like it." She softly patted Hal's chest in anticipation for her arriving memory to surface. "Do you know what _my_ first kiss was like?"

"Nothing like hers, I suppose."

"It was awkward and with this guy named Hal Benson. I was about thirteen or so, completely gawky and a little strange, I guess. None of the guys at school liked me. Everything about me was terribly out of proportion. My head was too big for my shoulders, my arms were too long for my body...it wasn't very pretty. But Hal, he was this sweet guy who I was friends with and one day while he was over at my house, we started talking about first kisses for whatever reason. I told him I had never been kissed and before I knew it, he was leaning over in his chair to me...only thing is, it was a little too far and he landed smack on the ground! After he got up after turning about thirty different shades of red, we both realized there was no turning back. We _had_ to kiss then. And so, we did and I think we might have both been expecting fireworks or something but there wasn't anything between us except my attempt to stiff back laughter and his bruised ego."

"It's a good thing you've been kissed since then, huh?"

"A very good thing. What about you, Hal. What was your first kiss like?"

"I, uh, don't remember."

Olivia lifted herself off of Hal to show him her disbelief. "You don't remember. How do you not remember your first kiss?"

"Well, I...I was really young and it wasn't that memorable."

"Oh come on, Hal. It's not like I just asked you who you lost your virginity to. I just asked about your first kiss."

"I really don't--"

"Was she blonde?"

Hal blinked. "N-no..."

"Redheaded?"

"No. Olivia, what are you doing?"

"Well, since you won't tell me, I'm going to see if I can at least guess a description out of you. Tall or short?"

"Olivia, please. Can't we just finish watching the movie?"

"Sure. Sure we can, Hal."

She couldn't concentrate on the movie. She laid across him again and took apart the entanglement of emotions she had felt exit with his words and when she concluded that most of it had been buried pain, she reacted almost subconsciously by bringing his slender frame closer to her.

"Are you okay, Olivia? You cold?" He asked when he felt the added pressure to her embrace.

"No, I'm fine."

He moved his hand up and down her arm anyway. "You sure? It's a little chilly in here. I can turn the heat up."

Olivia laughed. "No, Snake will come down here and pistol whip you if you touch the thermostat. You know he likes it a few degrees lower than the Arctic."

"He'll live."

"You know," Olivia began, repackaging him in her arms when he sat back down, "I bet you were the perfect boyfriend to the last girl you dated."

He laughed, more amused by her assumption than flattered. "I don't know about perfect. A stop on the way to being perfect is usually good."

She looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"It means that I was never very good at the relationship thing."

"I find that very hard to believe."

"It's true. I've always been terrible with people so I'm not even sure why I even attempted relationships."

"It couldn't have been that bad, Hal."

"Maybe you should call up Lauren and ask her."

"Who's Lauren?"

"My last girlfriend."

"Well, you got her number?"

"No. I think I kind of forgot to ask for it after I walked in on her with another guy."

Olivia frowned. "Hal, I'm sorry."

"It's alright. I guess I kind of deserved it. I don't know know why she even stuck around for as long as she did."

"I'm sure you're just being hard on yourself."

" I didn't experience college the way other people did. I was always studying and even if I wasn't studying, I was always had my head stuck in something about robotics or technological solutions. I wasn't around much for her and I think I only had a girlfriend was because it was the only thing that made me feel like I was actually having a somewhat normal college experience. I don't think people even knew we dated. We didn't do the coupley stuff like hold hands or go out to dinner. After about six months, I guess she finally got sick of having a...relationless relationship and one night, I walked in and saw her with someone else. The funniest thing is that there wasn't any yelling or crying like I guess there should have been. She just looked at me and said, 'We both knew it was over with long before now...I just admitted it first.'"

"Did you love her?" Hal continued to travel the length of Olivia's arm with a painter's careful brush strokes as he thought.

"Yeah." He finally said, "I felt I did, anyway. I didn't have a reason to feel like I shouldn't. She was intelligent, determined, and beautiful...but by the time our relationship ended, I realized those were the only things I knew about her. The obvious things. I didn't even know what her favorite color was."

"Don't worry, Hal. I think one day you're going to make some woman very, very happy. You'll see."

The compliment didn't rest on his face the way she imagined it would before she said it. Instead, it deflated around a small forced smile.

"We're missing the movie." He reminded her.

* * *

"What are you doing up here?"

Olivia visored her hand over eyes and looked up at the figure standing over her.

"Tanning."

"It's dusk."

She patted the patch of shingles next to her. "I still got a few minutes left. Why don't you join me? I'm sure it couldn't hurt anything."

Hal felt his body become too influenced by the steep slant of the roof and he struggled slightly to regained his dexterity and stopped himself. Olivia giggled as she watched him finally ease down into a sitting position next to her.

"Watch your step."

"Thanks for the advice. So, why in the hell are you on the roof?"

"I like it up here. It's quiet. I think a better question is how did you find me?"

"I came outside and happened to look up and see a half naked girl on the roof. Came to investigate."

Olivia passed a glance over the exposed skin running from out of the black halter top and cut off jogging pants.

"Well, I'm happy _someone_ liked my ensemble."

"It's pretty quiet on the ground, too, Olivia." He reminded her, inflicting his own pending comfortableness at the moment.

"Yeah but you don't get a view like this from the ground."

Hal looked around at their surroundings and then back at her. "I didn't know you were such a grass and tree enthusiast."

"You see grass and trees, I see beautiful and peaceful seclusion. Plus, I had to thaw out. Snake is making me a Popsicle in the house."

Hal's eyes caught the curves of Olivia's body in the dusk lighting being splashed onto her. When she unhooked her right leg from over her left, his eyes automatically drew to the place he knew the bullet wound still existed on her. It was over grown with scar tissue now and without knowing it was there it easily looked as if it could have been nothing more than slight discoloration. But when Hal thought about the revolver bullet still lodged underneath, it made it as hard to look at then as it had been seeing it put there.

"Hey, you look like you saw a ghost."

Hal shook his head and carefully leaned back to put his head next to hers. The sky was a stir of late evening pastels that hung over the trees and gave him the feeling that they were under a bigger roof than the one they were lying on.

"Are you searching for yourself?"

Hal turned his head to the right at her. "What's that mean?"

"It means that maybe your body is here but you aren't. You've been so distant ever since a few nights ago when we watched that movie."

"I'm sorry. Wasn't intentional. I've just been thinking a lot."

"You wanna tell me what about?"

"Life."

Olivia propped herself on her elbow to look at him. "You sound like you're thinking more about how you've _lived_ your life."

"I'm thirty-four and I've accomplished absolutely nothing, Olivia."

"Well, that's not true! You and Snake have pulled this world from the brink of destruction more than once."

"Yeah, right after we put it there in the first place. We didn't save the world, we just corrected what we had done to it."

"If that's not an accomplishment, Hal, I think I'm going to need you to define your meaning of that word."

"It means that every relationship I've had has failed in some way or another, that I'm a complete social outcast who can't make small talk with the cashier at the grocery store, and that I can't even remember the last thing I did that's made me happy."

"Oh," Olivia bit the knuckle on her index finger for a moment. "Well, it if makes you feel any better I'm a thirty-two year old widow who's a complete social outcast with no children. And a revolver bullet in her leg that makes me walk like a pirate." She added before she put her hand on his arm. "Cheer up, Hal. Happiness comes in a lot of small moments, not any one big one. How about the night we watching that movie together...you were happy then, right?"

"Yeah..."

"And how about that time we spent the entire day at Coney Island stuffing ourselves on overpriced corn dogs and riding everything that turned us upside down? You were happy then, right?"

Hal laughed. "We were both so sick the next day. I didn't think I'd ever eat again!"

"You see. You've been happy...you were just overlooking the small stuff."

"It kind of seems like all my happy moments have been with you, Olivia."

"I'm sure you had happy moments before me, Hal." She paused sharply. "What's that?"

"What? You hear something?"

She started carefully to her feet. "You don't hear that? It sounds like it's coming from inside the house. It's...music."

Hal concentrated hard on the air and finally lifted the light notes of music making their way into his ears. He followed Olivia through the window they had both come out through which put them in the spare bedroom they used as an office.

"Why is Snake playing music?"

"It's not him playing music that's weird," Hal said, "it's the fact that it's so loud."

"It sounds like it's coming from downstairs."

Olivia lead the descend down the stairs and into the living room. The loud rock music blaring from the speakers made Olivia and Hal's heads both thump in time with the deep bass rhythm--but Snake looked strangely unaffected. Hal ran to the stereo and hit the first button he could find that killed the sound while Olivia made her way over to the corner of the room Snake was sitting in.

"Snake, why was the music so loud a second ago? Snake?" She knelt down next to him. "Snake, answer me."

He finally looked at her, his eyes full of a confusion and rage that she could tell wasn't directed at her but hadn't found the right thing to be aimed at yet. She called his name again and then looked to Hal.

"Go get me something breakable."

"What?"

"A glass is fine."

"Why?"

She didn't answer but Hal did as she said anyway and brought back a thin drinking glass back from the kitchen. Without taking her eyes off Snake, she stood up and discharged the glass hard to the ground. The pieces exploded across the wood floor between the three of them and Hal grabbed her by the arm.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Olivia?"

"Nothing...but there's something's wrong with him."

"What are you talking about?"

"He just had a glass shatter 4 feet from him, Hal, and he didn't so much as blink."

"Maybe he knew you were going to throw it. Unlike me." He added.

"It doesn't matter. He should have winced or reacted in some way on impact." She knelt down again and brought her hand to his face.

"What are you saying?"

"He can't react if he never heard it."


	2. Chapter 2

_So that's how it goes, eh? I write something I think is completely useless and you guys give me glowing responses about it. This is kinda like what happened with "Adjustment Periods". I thought it was terrible and posted it mostly because I had spent way too much time writing it to let it collect dust on my hard drive and 50 reviews, 10,000 views and a plug on GameSpot . com later, I'm eating those words for dinner. I'm constantly amazed at how many different kinds of wrong I can be about my own work's quality. Well, thank you guys as always for enjoying "My Name is Trouble" and look forward to "Rescape", (formally "Hear You Me") to be posted pretty soon! - Andi_

* * *

Even with the curious pairs of eyes on him, Dr. Garner took his time looking over the chart in front him. By the time he cleared his throat and reattached his glasses to his face, the pair of green ones crossed her arms in front of her and huffed in impatience.

"Doctor--"

"I'm sorry. I don't see anything wrong him. All the tests are negative."

"What do you mean there's nothing wrong with him? He went completely deaf over the course of a few hours and you're telling me you can't find out what it is!"

"Olivia," Hal placed his arm around her shoulders and pulled her back down to the seat before she could stand.

"Ms. Steele, I know you're upset and you have every right to be...but we really are trying here."

"Well try harder!"

"We're going to keep running tests until we find out what happened to David. Now, you said that there were no sudden loud noises that he might have been too close to that could have done this?"

They both shook their heads.

"How about any illnesses?"

Olivia and Hal exchanged a long look before he looked at the doctor and offered an answer.

"None that we know of."

"In that case," the doctor blindly lifted an ink pen out of his coat pocket, "We're going to check David for a few things first—recent head trauma, diabetes, otosclerosis, hypertension—and then if we don't find anything, we'll do a few x-rays. We're going to need to keep him overnight. We'll call you if anything comes up."

"Overnight? Here?"

"Ms. Steele, sudden hearing loss without a clear cause is never a good thing. It almost always means there's something more serious under the surface happening."

"I'm staying here with him."

"I don't think there's a need for that, Ms.--"

"I'm not letting him stay here alone around a bunch of strangers."

The doctor sighed and closed the chart in his hand. "Very well, Ms. Steele. The decision is yours. I'll make the nurses aware of your presence. He's in room 211."

"Olivia," Hal said once the doctor was gone, "there's nothing either one of us can do for him. Let's go home for right now."

"I can't leave him here, Hal. He can't hear anything and now he's going to be in a building full of people he don't know poking and prodding at him. He's got to be freaked. I have to stay here with him. He needs to see at least one face he knows."

Hal nodded. "Okay."

Olivia threw herself around Hal. "He's going to be alright, Hal. I'm going to make sure of it."

"I know you will, Olivia."

* * *

Snake didn't let his expression tell how happy he was to see Olivia limp around the corner of the door and smile at him. She was someone without a white coat, needle, request for blood sample, or title at the beginning of their name. She stroked her hand over his brow a few times and then wrote something down on the pad she had in her hand.

"I'm fine," he answered aloud after he read it. "Where's Hal?"

She wrote down 'Home' and showed it to him.

"If you talk slowly, I can read your lips." He paused. "Am I talking loud?"

She smiled and pinched her thumb and index together.

"I'm sorry."

Olivia bit her lower lip and shook her head and sat down next to him on the bed.

"It's okay," She mouthed slowly to him. "I'm staying here with you tonight."

"No. Go home, Olivia. I'll be out of here in a couple of hours. They're just going to run some tests and send me on my way."

"I don't want you to be alone, Snake. I can't imagine what you must feel like right now."

He smirked. "I feel deaf."

Her eyes reflected back to him a light scold. "You've already lost this argument, Snake..." She paused when she noticed he was having trouble understanding her and picked up the pad and scribed quickly on it.

'YOU'VE ALREADY LOST THIS ARGUMENT. I'M STAYING.' She attached a smile to the end of the note as she held it up for him that told Snake that she was right.

The door opened and produced a young brunette nurse with a clipboard in her hands that Snake had already met. He sighed to himself when he remembered what her presence had meant the last time.

"So, how's our patient?" She asked more to Olivia than him. She did, however, beam a smile in his direction that she intended to be warm but only came off as a confirmation of intentions for him.

"You're drawing his blood?" Olivia asked, nodding to what she recognized from her own nursing days to be a needle and tube in tote.

"Yeah. Again. Dr. Garner ordered a specific test after studying David's charts a little more. I know he's getting sick of seeing me. This is the third time I've been in here." She turned to him. "Okay, David. I'm sorry to do this again but which arm did we use the last time?"

Without enthusiasm, he held up his left arm for her.

"We'll use the right one this time, then."

Having it be the third time she had drawn his blood, she almost had a cache memory of his arm and its anatomy. She swiftly located his vein, inserted the needle, and drew a tube's worth out of blood. She applied a band-aid over the puncture and patted it twice gently.

"I'll try and make this the last time you see me, David." She looked back at Olivia and smiled as she filled out a label to put on the tube for the lab. "So, this your husband?"

The question raised an uproar of laugher from her gut but she stopped it before it could surface by clearing her throat. "No. He's just a good friend of mine."

"Oh," she sounded almost disappointed. "I'm sorry, that must have been terribly intrusive. It's just that me and some of the other hens at the desk thought you were his wife from way you were shaking everyone with a name tag for information about his status."

Olivia looked back at Snake, hoping he wasn't skilled enough to read the tulip pink lips of the nurse at that moment.

"I guess I'm just a very worried friend."

"He's very lucky. Most people don't opt to stay overnight with someone if they're just having tests done. Well, I shouldn't have to bother you guys for the rest of the night. That chair over there," she gestured to a brown, leather chair, "is a recliner. I can bring you a blanket or something if you like."

"No, that's okay. You've been very sweet already..."

"Lillian." She filled in. "You're Olivia, right?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Your name is on the chart. David listed you and a Hal Emmerich as family. Usually we don't allow that but when we asked him about actual related family members, he insisted that you guys were pretty much the closest to it." She smiled again and fully at Olivia this time. "Goodnight, guys."

* * *

Olivia was in the smallest margin of awake when she heard an usual disturbance coming from Snake's direction. She quickly put on her glasses to sharpen the room and along with the instant focus came the view of his awkwardly flailing yet still asleep body. She quickly rushed over to him and called to him a few times until her mind slung shot her senses into what was happening. She jammed the call button until seconds later, two nurses rushed in, one being Lillian.

"He's seizuring!" Lillian called as soon as she saw him. "Ada, I need 45 cc of Clonzepam right now!"

The other nurse quickly exited the room as Lillian examined Snake.

"Was he complaining of any unsual sensations or having any hallucinations that you know of?" She asked Olivia.

"No, he was fine! I just woke up and he was like this. Is he going to be okay?"

The unfamiliar nurse returned with a syringe that she gave to Lillian.

"Hold him down, Ada!"

"I'm trying. He's too strong!"

Lillian picked up the phone next to the bed and punched in a few numbers before talking into it. "I need assistance stat in Room 211. I have a patient seizuring that may need restraints."

"Restraints? Don't use those! You're going to frighten him!" Olivia warned, Snake's past war experiences ringing alarms louder than the commotion that was filling the room from the entering bodies of help.

Lillian grabbed Olivia's shoulders. "Olivia, I'm going to have to ask you to leave now."

"Please, just don't use the restraints! I'm begging you!"

"It's for his and our safety. It's not going to hurt him."

Olivia shrieked sharply when two addition pairs of hands begun to apply the leather straps to Snake's body and soon, Lillian grabbed her arm and lead her firmly out of the room. Olivia lost a few moments in time and didn't gain them back until the door slammed shut behind her. She reached into her pocket for her cell phone and somehow remembered the numbers to connect her to Hal. As soon as she heard his voice on the other end, she collapsed to her knees on the tile of the hall way.

"Olivia? Olivia, what's wrong?"

When she tried to tell him, she garbled the words and replaced them with sobbing.

"Olivia! Is something wrong with Snake? Olivia?"

"I really, really need you right now, Hal."

"I'm on my way."

* * *

In twenty-five minutes, Hal was to the hospital, wrapping Olivia in his arms. She had calmed down but she still buried herself into him like she feared he could float away from her.

"What happened to Snake?"

"He had a seizure in the middle of the night. No one can tell where it came from. He was fine earlier, Hal. I don't know what happened. I just woke up and saw him like that..."

"Come, on. Let's sit down." Olivia's body still clattered with residual trembles as she sat down. "Do you need something to drink?"

"Only if one of these vending machines pop out vodka."

Hal was relieved to hear her sense of humor. He knew things couldn't be too terrible if she could tell a joke.

"Have you heard anything about him?"

"Yeah. The nurse came out a little while ago and told me he was stable and doing fine. They gave him a shot of Clonzepam. It's an anticonvulsant," she explained upon seeing Hal's blank stare at her, "He should be okay...but I don't think they're going to discharge him tomorrow. I know they're going to want to do more tests on him."

"Can we see him?"

"Yeah. We can see him. The Clonzepam probably has him a little woozy, though."

As soon as they entered the room, Hal knew Olivia had been right. Snake's head slowly lolled over to watch them come in the door, reacting only in a few long, drowsy blinks.

"Hey you," Olivia said as she approached him, "You nearly gave me a heart attack. You're going to be in such big trouble for scaring me like that." He seemingly responded to her with a smirk that hung on his face until his eye lids became to heavy to reopen to her. She sighed. "I'd rather see him like this than the way he was earlier."

"Snake's immortal." Hal said, speaking as if he were child idolizing a superhero, "He can survive anything."

"I'd give anything in the world right now for that to be true."

"I've been pretending it is for nine years."

"Does it help?"

Hal shook his head. "Not really." He looked back up at Snake, "But when I lie to myself, it helps me to not think about what's really happening. Terrible logic, I know, but it's all I have left. Fate's determined to take everything and everyone who's ever meant anything to me away."

"Hal..."

Snake's stirring brought both of their attention to him as he took in the figures walking to him.

"Why are you here?" Snake asked Hal, each word fighting under the lethargy set in his voice.

"You don't remember what happened to you?"

"Hal," Olivia called, "speak slower so he can read your lips."

Hal repeated what he said, slowly, but the look of confusion only set deeper into the lines on Snake's face.

"No, what happened?"

"You had a seizure a few hours ago."

"What?"

Olivia took her notepad and wrote in big letters across it.

"Seizure?" He repeated the only word that stuck out to him.

Olivia nodded in place of Hal's silence and placed her hand on Snake's shoulder. Just as she did, a thought snapped his head around to her.

"You were sleeping in here. Did you see it?"

Olivia nodded again. "You had me really worried. For a second, I almost thought I was going to lose you. I don't know what I would have done if that would have happened." The thought hadn't slipped back into her mind far enough yet to keep it from showing on her face still. Snake followed Olivia's eyes when they suddenly went to Hal.

"Since he's okay," he said, "I think I'm going back home."

"Is something the matter?" Olivia asked, her voice more leaning toward peeved at his abruptness than concerned.

"I trust that you'll take care of him, Olivia."

She visibly seethed in the moments she allowed Hal to escape down the hall. She signaled to Snake that she'd soon return and bolted out after him. Right as she reached out to take his wrist and brake his pace, he pivoted around to glance at her but continued steadily towards the door.

"What the hell is your problem, Hal?", she demanded.

"Snake is okay, I'm going back home. I don't have a problem. I'm tired and I want to go to sleep."

"Stop and talk to me!"

Hal came to a stop and reluctantly gave her his attention.

"You've been acting so strange lately. What's going on with you?"

"I really don't want to talk about it here."

"Big shock there! I've noticed there isn't a whole lot you want to talk about anywhere lately." Olivia took her hands off her hips and relaxed her shoulders. "I understand that you're scared. So am I. I don't know if I could handle anything bad happening to Snake. I really need you right now and you're not even trying to be here with me." She stepped closer to him. "Did I upset you that night we watched the movie? Was it something I said?"

"It wasn't anything you said, Olivia. It was everything I should have said."

Before she could coordinate the muscles in her face to call his name, he was disappearing into the parking lot behind the double glass doors. She knew that moment that despite everything, she was closer to losing Hal than she was to losing Snake.


	3. Chapter 3

_Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, tap._

Snake liked watching Olivia like a silent movie, adding the soundtrack of her movements as he followed them around the room. She wasn't particularly graceful or beautiful but her blunt refusal to care how uneven and awkward the limp from her left leg was made her fascinating to him in the way that only a monstrosity had been for him in the past. And in her moments of carelessness when she tucked her hair back and smiled, he concentrated on the glowing imperfection of her face—the wide line of scar tissue that rode the rail of her cheek bone. If she knew just how much it overcame the form of her face whenever she completed that motion, he was sure she'd do it less, even if it was unintentionally, so he would never tell her. Olivia's eyes were the only thing that were tragic to him. They were, in every traditional sense, beautiful and that did absolutely nothing for him when he looked into them. He saw the world's beauty in them—lustrous and contained—but not his.

She turned to him and mouthed something of a request, gesturing to the bottle of medicine she had just placed beside him. He shook his head and watched her face furl into that deep concern that she seemed to reserve just for him these days. She fell into the spot next to him on the sofa in mid sigh and moved her fist in front of her lips to shield the fact that she was practicing her worst habit in front of him--biting her lip. After a long, potent silence, when her hand came down to allow her to talk, he took the time to process the different shapes her mouth took and began to move his own in response. He's was sure that what he wanted to say wouldn't take nearly as many formations but as his voice rumbled uselessly in his throat, he wondered if he was remembering correctly the requirements to make them words. It was all ultraviolet to his ears but he became sure he had at least said something when Olivia adjusted her glasses in her own mute acceptance and rose to her feet. She added a thought right before she left the room but it stayed behind her tongue and dissolved seamlessly into the small smile she coaxed into appearing on her face.

**...**

The smile had completely diluted by the time she had disappeared to the other side of the wall that put her and Snake in the same room. When she entered the living room again, her focus broke around a piece of paper pinned to the strip of the front door between the sunken panels on each side. Even before she reached a distance that allowed her to detach it, she knew it was Hal's handwriting, slanted with the same anticipation of her reading it as he was at the moment of seeing her.

* * *

"_I'm on top of you?_" Olivia repeated the message of the note just the way he knew she would.

"So you found me."

"Of course I did." Olivia said, stepping lightly across the shingles of the roof and lowering herself into the spot next to Hal. "I'm the queen of slightly sexual innuendo. So, you feel like talking now?"

"How's Snake?"

Olivia blinked at the blunt subject change. "He's decided to not take the medication anymore. He doesn't think it's doing anything."

"What do you think?"

"He's not entirely wrong." She admitted. "But it was something until we can find out what's wrong with him. It's going to get worse—he's already beginning to forget what his voice sounds like so his words aren't coming out as clearly anymore. He won't leave the house, he's not eating terribly well. If we don't find out what caused his deafness and fix it, he could give up all together. At least when he was taking the medicine, it made me feel like we were doing something...even if it was something that essentially was doing nothing."

"Placebo effect."

Olivia laughed. "Yeah, something like that, I suppose."

"He'll be okay. He's just got to learn to stop feeling sorry for himself."

"Well, that's one of you out of the way." She looked at him.

"What does that mean?"

"You've been completely AWOL for the past few weeks. You haven't wasted a single syllable on me or Snake that you didn't absolutely have to. I know something is bothering you. You don't have to talk about it but just know that when you do want to, I'm here."

As the wind picked up, Olivia imagined for a moment that Hal was controlling it. Everything around him moved and swayed in the influence of the breeze around him while he stayed perfectly still yet completely engulfed in whatever was playing out before him in his mind. When the wind died, Hal's eyes glinted with a silently reached conclusion that he turned to Olivia with.

"Marry me."

"What?"

"You heard me, Olivia. Marry me."

She let loose an amusing laugh in her confusion. "Your sense of humor's a little odder than I give you credit for, Emmerich."

"I think I did the first thing the rule book of living with a woman tells you _not_ to do: I fell in love with her."

"Ah. I get it." she said matter-of-factly, "You and Snake are working me, aren't you? First you ask me to marry you and then he does it and..." She watched Hal's face fall in sharp regret while she talked and soon she felt her own face join it. "Oh my God. You're serious."

"I didn't fully realize what I felt until that night when we were watching the movie and I was holding you."

"We always cuddle up when we watch movies. It's one of those best friends things that we do. This all couldn't have happened over the coarse of a few weeks, Hal."

"I've always had feelings for you. You just never noticed. By the time I was going to tell you how I felt, you had already decided that we were best friends so I didn't see a point. But there's something a lot stronger pulling at me now, something I didn't feel with Lauren or any other woman I've ever been with. I love you, Olivia."

Her eyes immediately swatted his confession down. "You don't love me," she quickly told him. "Besides Snake, I'm the only other face you've seen on a regular basis for almost a year. I'm the first person you see when you get up in the morning, you spend the entire day with or around me, and then at night, I'm the last face you see before you go to bed. It's like making a movie and spending four straight months with your co-star. If you allow it, there's bound to be sparks born from spending so much time around each other."

"Then why didn't you fall too?"

It was a simple question and Hal had asked it as such. Olivia, despite her silence, knew the answer but it was one she couldn't tell him. Instead, she hugged him to her by his shoulders .

"I love you so much", she said after a long moment of rearranging words in her head, "You're one of the most amazing people I've ever met and I just want to see you with someone that makes you happy...not someone you settled for. Besides, I'm a complete mess. I have a revolver bullet lodged into my left knee, I cry way too much, I'm total spaz and jump whenever a balloon pops near me, and I have dead husband that I don't think I'll ever truly get over. You don't want to marry me, Hal. You deserve someone who's elegant, someone who knows ballroom dancing _and_ quantum physics and I'm not that girl." She pulled back to look at him. "You understand, right?"

"Not really," he admitted in a forced joking manner, "but there's nothing I can do about it, I guess." He reached inside in his side pocket and produced a black, velvet box. When he opened it, her breath caught in the image of the simple silver band with five small emerald stones embedded across it.

"This is for you. It's really simple, I know, but--"

"An engagement ring?"

Hal slipped her hand in his and slid the ring onto her right ring finger.

"Hal..."

"Do you like it?"

"It's beautiful. It's perfect and beautiful...but I can't take this."

He laughed. "You kind of have to. I had it specially made for you. The jewelry store doesn't take back customized items."

"Customized?"

"Yeah. I know that you hate gold so, I made the band silver, the emeralds remind me of the color of your eyes, and there's five stones, one for each time I came close to telling you how I felt and chickened out. I knew I had to tell you soon either I was going to have to add another stone."

"Hal, I—I don't even know what to say. I've never accepted an engagement ring from someone I wasn't even dating..."

"Well, there's a first time for everything. Maybe one day you'll say yes to me."

"Hal..."

"I'm kidding." He looked down at her hand again, perfectly carrying the ring the way he had envisioned it when he had designed it. "It looks amazing on you. I can't say that I wouldn't have liked to put this on your other hand, though."

"I'm so sorry."

"It's okay. I liked you too much after too little time. That's my fault, really."

"It's no one's fault, Hal. No one did anything wrong."

He nodded without the understanding it implied and started to the window to go back inside. He put one leg into the inside of the house before turning back to look at her.

"I know what kind of girl you are, Olivia...but you're the only one that thinks that should make me want you less."

She wedged her whirling head in her hands to steady it. Hal's feelings hadn't been the fault of anyone...but the crushing of them had been all hers. The ring she felt hugging her hand only made it worse. It was a painfully perfect reminder of every feeling he had poured out to her that she could never return.

Her cell phone sudden burst with movement and sound from in her pocket. She scanned the first few numbers of the incoming call and felt her heart flutter in the realization of where it was from.

"Yes, this is Olivia...Yes, David and I can see Dr. Garner first thing tomorrow morning."

* * *

Olivia looked nervous, like she knew something or at least the possible outcome of something that he didn't know about. She made weak attempts to mask her thoughts and occasionally reconnect with his glances in half hearted smiles and on one of her attempts that had involved her putting her hand on his arms, he looked down and noticed the foreign object around her finger. He automatically lifted her hand in his and observed the ring in the harsh florescent illumination of the exam room.

"What's this? I've never seen you wear this before."

Olivia picked up Snake's glance from the ring back to her and mouthed, "It's new. A gift from Hal."

"Why would he give you a ring like this?"

Her hand tugged back a little bit, her body reacting to the uncomfortable nature of the question.

"I don't know. He just did."

She almost looked happy to see Dr. Garner come in though soon, the worry resettled on her face as he took a few glances over his chart before speaking.

"So, how is he?"

Dr. Garner's question was practiced, little to no authentic emotion or care for any particular answer riding on his words. He faked enough concern to not sound heartless but failed at making it sound sincere enough for Olivia and it hit a cord of irritation in her.

"He's not eating the way he should and I don't think the medication you gave him is working."

"Did he stop taking it?"

"Well, I can't _make_ him take it. Especially if he's not seeing the results."

He quickly jotted a note in slight annoyance. "With your nursing background, Ms. Steele, you of all people should know that these things don't work over night."

"You're married aren't you, Dr. Garner?"

Her tone told him she knew the answer and he didn't even have to follow her eyes to know they were locked on the wedding ring on his left hand.

"Yes, I am."

"Then _you_ of all people should know that the rules of medicine do not apply to the people you care about."

He clinched his jaw and bared his attention back down into the folder in his hand.

"I'm going to be very straight with you, Ms. Steele. We've run every feasible test we can in this facility and we can not figure out why David can't hear anymore. There's been no damage to his ears or brain and he tested negative for any illnesses that could be associated with it. It's like whatever's attacking him is doing it invisibly."

"There's no such thing as an invisible disease."

"I know and we're not giving up on him but this is going to be a lot more complicated than any of us thought. The hearing loss, that's not the disease itself but rather a symptom of one. It's got to be to something in David's body happening on the genetic level which means he's always had the disease, he's just been asymptomatic until now."

"Are you going to run more tests?"

"Yes, but we still have no idea what we're testing for." He produced a small flashlight from his pocket and swept it over the pupils of Snake's eyes. He doubled back to his left one and paused the flashlight over it.

"David, how old are you?" He mouthed to him once he pulled back.

"Forty-one."

"Have you noticed a difference in your vision lately? Dulled colors, blurriness, double vision?"

"He can't understand you. You're talking too fast." Olivia took out a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and wrote what the doctor had said on it.

Once he read over it, he shook his head to Dr. Garner. The doctor jotted something else down and signaled to Snake to extend his right arm in front of him.

"What's going on?" Olivia finally asked.

"I'm sure this is just my imagination but I thought I saw something that look like it could turn into a cataract in his left eye."

"That's not normal at forty-one."

"I know, especially since there's been no trauma to the eye or sign of a disease that could have caused it but it's certainly not impossible." Dr. Garner lightly pinched and pulled a few areas of skin on the back of David hand and arm. "You say he's not eating properly?"

"Yeah. I think everything is starting to get to him and it's been cutting his appetite."

"How long has this been going on?"

"For a week and a half or so."

"He's a bit dehydrated and due to that, his skin's a bit discolored so make sure he's at least drinking the proper amount of liquids. I'm writing him a prescription--"

"Please, Dr. Garner, no more ear medications. They aren't doing anything and he won't take them."

"For Lexapro," he finished before he tore off the paper from his pad and handed it to her. "It's an anti-depressive. I'm positive now that those other medications weren't doing anything either. Hopefully that will just help him to eat and feel a little better. A nurse will be in here shortly to get a few more blood samples and a saliva swab from him. We'll contact you when all the results are back in."

"When will that be?"

"A few weeks," he said, "or whenever whatever this thing is decides to finally make an appearance."


	4. Chapter 4

"Mushrooms?" Olivia picked up the small can Hal had thrown into the grocery cart seconds before. "We don't ever cook anything that has mushrooms in it."

"Maybe we should start."

"I don't think Snake likes mushrooms."

"Well, we can eat them."

"Well, I don't exactly love them either. I don't have anything against them but just about the only thing I can have them on is pizza. Heavily, heavily cheesed pizza."

"That's a crime. You can't even taste them that way."

"That's the point." She dropped the can back into the cart and lifted the bag of grapes off the scale she had turned her attention away from. "I don't need to taste them. I need to know that they are there and that I'm eating them but not tasting them."

"You should try them by themselves."

"Ew, Hal! You don't seriously..."

"They're good for you!"

Olivia made a face and shook her head. "I do _not_ envy your taste buds."

Hal smiled and lifted an item from the cart and waved it in front of her. "Because eating pepperoni by itself is _so_ much more normal."

"Hey," she snatched it down. "That's different. Pepperoni actually has a taste."

"Yeah, but do you know what pepperoni is _made_ of?"

"All the parts of the pig that didn't make it into the hot dog, right?"

"Worse. All the parts that didn't make it into the hot dog _or_ the hamburger."

"You're not ruining pepperoni for me, Hal Emmerich." She pushed him lightly and caught a look at her watch as she did so. "We better pick up the pace. It's getting late and I don't like to leave Snake alone for too long."

Hal frowned and deflated his shoulders. "I'm sure he's okay, Olivia."

"I'm sure he is too but it scares me that he's alone and can't hear anything that's happening around him. What if the smoke detector goes off or the alarm system? He's almost completely vulnerable."

"Snake is a soldier and he's been taught to use all of his senses for that very reason. He's perhaps even safer by himself than he is with us there because he can concentrate more without us interfering with that soldier intuition he has."

Olivia wanted to tell him that she didn't see the all knowing super soldier that Hal did when she looked at him but it seemed more beneficial to the moment to select the package of ground beef in front of her and place it into the cart. She caught Hal's expression change in her peripheral vision.

"What did I say?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"You got quiet."

"I'm thinking."

"Not that much thought goes into picking out ground beef."

"No, not about that but about everything else. Snake's sudden deafness, your marriage proposal, how we walk around pretending like it never happened. I'm wearing the ring of a man I'm not in love with." Olivia grimaced. "Hal, I'm sorry. That came out the wrong way."

"Yeah."

"Hal..."

"You can take the ring off if you want. I didn't mean to make you feel like you had to wear it."

"I love the ring. I just don't want to make you feel like I'm leading you on by continuing to wear it."

"You mean you don't want me to become delusional over time and forget that you'll never feel anything for me, right? Don't worry. That's something I'll never forget. I'm going to wait in the car."

The silence between them rode thickly with them on the car ride back and didn't leave until they reached the doorway of the house. Olivia opened the door and almost staggered from the heat wave that launched out at her.

"Good God. It's an oven in here." She said, placing the bags on the floor.

Hal checked the thermostat. "The heat is on...and it's turned up to 90."

"Snake!" Olivia immediately limped off to the upstairs and to Snake's room.

Snake was wrapped in a cocooned layer of blankets, shivering madly despite the beads of sweat running from his face. When she tried to peel off some of the cover, he clutched tightly to it.

"Why is it so cold, Olivia?"

"It's not cold, Snake. You're actually overheating yourself. You're going to pass out if you keep all this cover on you. Just trust me, okay?"

Snake unhinged his grip from around the cover and let Olivia take a few of the pieces off. When Hal entered the room, she talked without looking at him.

"We need to get him to the hospital."

"Why? What's going on?"

"If he's going into shock, we could be in big trouble. I need you to go into the kitchen and put water into a container that can come with us to the hospital. I'll get him into the car."

"What's happening to him?" There was fear in that question. A stark realization of Snake not being super human or invincible.

She soothed her voice over. "He's going to be alright, Hal. I just need you to do as I asked, okay?"

Despite her own fears building inside of her as she looked at him, Olivia was in control on the outside. Snake's breathing chattered in the heavy tremoring of his body and Olivia moved her hands over him to try and create some sort of calm over him. And herself.

"You better be alright, Snake."

* * *

Lillian paged Dr. Garner when she recognized the name on the admitted patients chart and quickly left the nurse's station to head to the room number that had been next to his name. She saw Olivia's sorrow drowned features before she ever looked in the occupied hospital bed behind her.

"What happened to him?" She asked.

"He might have been going into shock but I don't know. _We _don't know." Lillian looked in the corner of the room behind the door and saw a younger, soft faced male with lighting sharp eyes and messy brown hair sitting in the chair there. "A doctor hasn't actually seen him yet but, when we walked in, he blacked out and they immediately got him situated in this room."

"I paged Dr. Garner for you. He's not on call so he'll be a few minutes but he's the only one with a full history of David's condition. I think it would be best if he handled this."

"Thank you, Lillian. I really appreciate that."

"Can I get you guys anything?"

"I'm okay." Olivia looked to the corner. "Hal?"

He had left his eyes pointed at the floor but she knew that Hal wasn't anywhere near his body anymore. He shook his head 'no' just enough for it to register as movement.

"Well, call me if you need anything. I'm on all night."

The beeping of the machines that were hooked up to Snake swelled the mood in the room until Olivia heard Hal quickly raise to his feet.

"Where are you going?"

"Out. I need some fresh air. I'll be back."

"Hey," she placed her hands on his shoulders and spun him around to face her, "you okay?"

He nodded quickly and shoved his glance away from her. Right after he shoved his hands in his pockets, Olivia attempted to lift them out again but he wrung free of her.

"I'm fine. I just...I just need air."

When she was alone with Snake, she took his hand in hers and placed it to her face.

"I really, really need you to be okay. Hal and I are both finding out that maybe we don't function too well without you so, you...you can't leave like this." She brought his hand to her lips and drew in closer to him. "I won't let you pull away from me. You're not allowed to."

She spun around when the door opened and Dr. Garner acknowledged her with a half hearted glance of sympathy.

"Ms. Steele. I'm very sorry that we had to see each other under these circumstances."

"So am I."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Olivia took a deep breath, and retraced the events from the time she had discovered Snake in his condition to the moment they had arrived at the doors of the hospital. Dr. Garner crossed his arms in front of him and nodded as she spoke and when she finished, without hesitance, he gave his diagnosis.

"It sounds like David might have been having some sort of anxiety attack."

"Anxiety attack?" Olivia said, hoping she had heard him wrong.

"Yes. David's been through a lot in the past few weeks. He's having to adjust to a life he had no warning of having to adjust to. Maybe while you and Mr. Emmerich were gone, he started thinking about all of this and it triggered a severe anxiety attack."

"I'm not a doctor but I don't think this was something as simple as an anxiety attack. You didn't see him, Dr. Garner. He didn't look frightened...he looked sick. I think this was the result of whatever that's going on in him tearing at his system."

"I think we all may be over reacting a bit here." He placed two fingers on Snake's right wrist for a pulse reading and jotted it down on his chart. "His pulse is fine, and according to the chart, his heart rate is back down to normal. We'll keep him overnight and if he continues to improve, we'll release him tomorrow."

"What do you mean we may be over reacting about this? Something's very seriously wrong with him and you're treating him like he's making this stuff up or something."

The doctor turned to her and straightened his posture. "Ms. Steele, I think it's time we start to look at all the possibilities here for David's illness. The sudden deafness, the strange episode he had tonight. It's stated on his charts that he has a military background and that he was active as little as three years ago. Post traumatic stress disorder is a very strange disorder in the way that it can attack weeks, months, or even years after the initial event that caused it. And since it attacks everyone differently, maybe the deafness was his body's way of shutting out the pain and the memories of it all."

"Are you telling me you think David's faking being deaf?"

"No, not at all. I'm sure his deafness is very real to him...but I don't think it's stemming from a physical cause. Here," he took out a white note pad and began writing, "this is the number for Dr. Trista Hill, a wonderful psychologist who specializes in the effects of PTSD and other psychological disorders linked to it."

Olivia's eyes exploded at him in an emerald fury. "Does this really look fucking psychological to you!? You're simply brushing this off and calling him 'traumatized'? What about the seizure he had while he was in here last time? You think that was the result of PTSD as well? Or did you cut that little part out of your damn chart," she spat as she slapped it out of his hand and sent it sailing into the wall, "because it didn't fit it with your otherwise perfectly executed diagnosis?!"

"Olivia!" Two arms grabbed her waist from behind and prevented her taking any more steps closer to the doctor. "Let's go outside and get some air, okay?"

"There is something wrong with him and he's going to have to die for you to figure it out!"

Hal finally got her out the door though her words continued to stain the air and ears of the doctor. He quietly picked up the chart and flipped back a few pages. After a few seconds of reading over it, he picked up the phone and dialed to the nurse's station for Lillian. Within a few moments, she entered the room.

"What is it, Dr. Garner?" she asked.

"According to this patience's chart, you were the one who ordered 45 ccs of Clonzepam during a seizure he was having."

"That's correct, doctor." Her face dropped. "Was there something wrong with that call?"

"No, no. Your call was fine. But why wasn't I informed that he had had a seizure?"

"Well, we got it under control pretty quickly and he was fine afterwards. I guess I assumed you'd see it on his chart."

He signed, "Well, I didn't." He gently propped Snake's left eye lid open with his hand and flashed his light into it. "That wasn't my imagination after all then."

"What is it?"

"Come here," he handed her the flashlight and let her look herself.

"Is that a...cataract?" She said with all the disbelief he had in his own head. "He's a little young for this, isn't he?"

"Feel his skin. I thought the appearance was the result of dehydration until I realized how thin it is in some places. He's losing the fat under it."

"That's impossible. He's in his forties...that shouldn't happen until his early sixties or so."

"Lillian, call x-ray and tell them I need a bone density scan done on him ASAP. If this is what I think it is, this will go down in the medical history books."


	5. Chapter 5

Every movement that involved putting on his pants had hurt without a real reason to. And when it came to getting on his shirt, his arms wouldn't extend in all the directions he needed them to to do so. Or maybe they did but the action produced too much pain for him to test it. He looked back to look at the owner of the hand that touched his bare shoulder.

"You're not dressed yet, Snake?"

Snake was unfortunately getting better at lip reading but the resonating pain throughout his body made it seem like forever before he successfully processed her lips' words.

"I guess I'm just really tired still."

"You can sleep when we get home," Olivia told him, "I'm gonna go and get you discharged. You need anything?"

He shook his head.

Olivia smiled at him, that smile that made him forget for a second that he was embarrassed that he was in too much pain to even get his shirt on. It hung in the air and teased his sense even after she was out of the room. By himself again, his head the only thing successfully through its place on the garment. He lifted his arm again but felt a bolt of a explode in his right elbow and shoot throughout his arm. Even the simple action of reaching over with his left arm to cradle it produced an uncomfortable sensation that clenched his jaw shut.

He opened his eyes to Olivia's face immediately snapping into a look of concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm just a little stiff from laying down so long."

"Are you in pain?"

"No. I'm fine."

"Okay. Well, hurry and finish getting dressed. Long drive. Hal is waiting in the car."

She turned her back to him and tended to useless shuffling in her purse. The stifled grunts finally lead to a cry of agony that made Olivia's stomach knot but had been waiting for.

She lifted his face to hers.

"Hospital. You need to stay."

"No! I don't want to spend anymore time here. I'll be fine."

"Where's the pain?"

"Just my arms." He lied.

Olivia wasn't happy with his decision and he could feel it in the way she moved his arms to help carefully guide them into them into the sleeves of his shirt.

"You are stubborn. I hate it." she said to him after she had his left arm through. She paused and let his body absorb the sharpness of the stabs that had come from moving his arm that way and slowly started his right arm through the shirt. He gritted down on his teeth until it was over, using pieces of the training he had learned in the military to get through torture. Olivia brought her hand to Snake's face right after his body collapsed back onto the hospital bed as if it had just been put through a rigorous marathon. He couldn't move and there wasn't a single thought making its way to any part of his body to do so. Olivia's thumb ran back and forth over the area of skin that ran across his cheek bone.

"You are stubborn." she repeated.

Even though he couldn't hear her, he felt her coursing through him like a hot shot of whiskey and leaving him just as intoxicated as having one too many of them did. Before he knew it, her lips were parted and interlocked perfectly with his, finding how many different times she could position them to send surges of that tingling, prickling feeling that was taking the place of all the pain now.

"You shouldn't have done that." he told her, his escaping breaths still being lead by hers, "I'll only make trouble for you."

She laughed like a melody whipping across him. "Oh, I was in trouble long before I ever kissed you."

"I'm serious." His voice felt like sandpaper, scraping and dissolving across the surface of her smile, "I'll only hurt you, Olivia, and that's the last thing I ever want to do."

"Okay, then."

"Olivia!"

She snapped back away from Snake and eluded his attempts to catch her hand. She spent a long moment in opposite corner of the room, staring at the floor and raking her fingers through her dark brown hair.

"It never happened." She said so low and softly that she knew her lips hadn't moved enough for Snake to read them. She looked at him and snatched a pen and piece of paper from her pocket.

"It...never...happened!" She mouthed sharply as she wrote it and threw the paper at him. "You happy?"

"Olivia, please..."

Dr. Garner froze when the tension in the room bumped him at the doorway.

"Is this a bad time?" He asked, already sure that it was.

"No." Olivia said.

"I'm glad I caught you. I was afraid he had already left."

"We were on our way out. Is there something wrong?"

Dr. Garner closed the door and entered with a folder pressed to his chest.

"I have the x-rays from the bone density scan we did last night. David's body is aging at an accelerated speed. The results of the scan show that he has the bone density of someone almost twice his age."

Olivia imagined that even mechanics giving bad news about a car had a natural instinct to pause and allow for preparation between the greeting and a bombshell. But not him.

"What? What do you mean?" Olivia pulled the collar of her shirt as if it were suddenly tightening around it.

"The skin changes, the seizure, the cataract, the body temperature changes, the deafness—they're all part of Werner Syndrome."

"That's ridiculous! Do you know how rare that disease is, Dr. Garner? We actually skipped over it in nursing school."

"Trust me, it didn't exactly have a dedicated chapter in any of my books either. It's one of the reason I didn't have the slightest inclination to look for it until last night. The other is statistically, David is out of the age range for the symptoms of this to show up. The good news is since all the things happening in David's body were only symptoms and not damaged by any actual illness, the deafness can be reversed."

"Well, what about everything else?"

"Last year in 2012, the FDA approved a drug called Hydinodrene to treat the more painful effects of accelerated aging diseases—the aches in pains in joints and muscles—but there's no cure and he'll have to take it for the rest of his life."

It wasn't until the first tears started to roll down her face that she realized that Dr. Garner had been talking too quickly for Snake to pick up on any of what he had said. He was looking to her to tell him what had been said and she was trying her best to avoid contact with his eyes. Finally, he tugged at her arm.

"Olivia. What's wrong? What'd he say?"

She pursed her lips and put both her hands on either side of his face and for long moment, she didn't say anything.

"We'll talk about it on the way home."

"Ms. Steele," Dr. Garner started slowly, "I don't know if you realize just how much of a special case David really is but I do and soon, all of science could."

"What are you talking about?"

"His is the most unique case of Werner's I've ever seen...and the closest to the purest and traditional meaning of accelerated aging. There's no deformities or related heart problems like with normal cases. He's simply aging quickly and he's lived with the ability to do so his whole life without ever having so much as a clue or a symptom before now..."

Olivia noticed the moment Dr. Garner stopped looking at Snake like a human being and more like a Noble Prize.

"The drugs will still work, won't they?"

"Absolutely. Genetically, it looks just like every other case of Werner's. But the way his body reacted to the mutation is amazing and almost inhuman in a way."

Olivia crossed her arms in front of her, unhappy at where the conversation had gone in her head and even unhappier with Dr. Garner's increasing look of self-satisfaction. "We could save millions of lives," he said as if he could sense how his motives were coming off to her, "if this disease is starting to evolve and if David is the first case, we could learn a lot about it before it starts to spread."

Olivia remained silent.

"What I'm trying to say is--"

"Oh, I know exactly what you're saying, Dr. Garner," she corrected him, "and here's my response: You will not treat David like he's a goddamn lab rat just so that you can be Time Magazine's Person of the Year. And if you take a single cell from him that you're not supposed to and I find out about it, I'll sue you until those pretty little blue scrubs you like to wear are the _only_ thing you have to wear. Am I clear?"

Olivia had smiled as she talked which scared the doctor more than the treat itself. His voice lowered to a whisper under the beating.

"Crystal."

"Good." She added with the missing venom, "Give him the damn medication and leave the rest of science out of this."

* * *

Everything still sounded muffled, like it was going through layers of rich cotton or four feet of murky water before ever reaching his ears but he _could_ hear and if he read the lips of whoever was speaking, he could comprehend it and respond to it like someone with normal hearing. It had taken six weeks and three treatments of the Hydinodrene to receive that portion of his hearing back and what Dr. Garner had failed to mention was that each dose of Hydinodrene had be to given via shot—and directly into the base of his spinal cord. He had also failed to mention the side effects—dizziness, fatigue, nausea—all of which Snake felt for a few hours after each dose.

Olivia was patient and when everything in his world spun or started to disappear under heavy eye lids, she was always there to welcome him back. The kiss was never brought up or even hinted at and sometimes when he looked at her, he wondered where in her mind she had put it in order to stay at his side as if it hadn't happened.

The last bit of nausea had worn off when the sounds of Olivia's uneven steps entered the room. She entered his vision upside down, standing at the end of the couch he head was at.

"How you feeling?"

"Like I want to skip the next shot in two weeks."

She sat a glass of water on the table next to him. "Sorry. No can do. Besides, Dr. Garner said that in about 6 months you won't feel this way after the shots anymore."

"Did he say anything about them not being in my spine?"

Olivia rolled her eyes and signaled Snake to shift slightly to make room for her on the edge of sofa in front of him.

"I can't fix everything. I suggest you take the good news I just gave you and apply the effects where needed in the other areas."

"I'm really happy I can hear your voice again."

Olivia laughed. "All it does is complain and nag. I'm sure you didn't miss that at all."

"More than you know."

"Well soon when you're a hundred percent you'll be able to hear it in all its glory. Then you'll be wishing I'd shut up just like Hal does. Now, I need to go and start dinner before--"

"Thank you, Olivia."

Olivia sighed lightly with a smile. "Thank yous are for strangers and good Samaritans, Snake. I promise you I'm neither."

When she attempted to get up, she immediately felt Snake's hand wrap around hers and tie her back down.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

It wasn't until his hand slipped under her hair to the back of her neck that she realized what was going on and that she didn't want to stop it. Every sensation she had felt the first time her lips had made contact with his return immediately and caught fire to every piece of flesh his lips caught on the breaks away from hers.

"Hey, hey, hey...wait...," she extended her hands across his shoulders. His lips remained slightly parted in order to not get too used to the feeling of not having her skin under them. "I thought you were trouble for me."

"I'm willing to take that chance."

Olivia sank herself back into Snake and let him explore every part of her body that had only existed to him underneath her blouse and skirt until then. By the time his hands had found the the fastener on the rim of her skirt, she jerked up suddenly and widened her eyes at the door way.

"Shit!"


	6. Chapter 6

"Hal! Let me explain!"

"How could I have been so stupid?"

"I'm sorry!"

"You have nothing to apologize for, Olivia. I'm the one who's sorry."

Olivia finally caught up to him and grabbed his arm as he was taking his jacket off a dining room chair. "Hal, I don't even know where to start but please believe me when I say I never meant to hurt you. Not ever."

"I know exactly where to start. I fell in love with you, I got the stupid courage to tell you and ask you to marry me, and when you told me you didn't have feelings for me, I wondered for _months_ what was wrong with me and now I can't believe it took me so long to figure out what it was: I wasn't Snake."

"That's not true—"

"Then what's the truth, Olivia? If I've told the story wrong then please tell me."

"Hal...please just calm down. Where are you going?"

"Out." He stuffed his set of keys into his pocket.

"Don't leave. Not like this. You're upset and I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Something already happened to me, Olivia. I lost. Again. I gave my heart to someone who didn't want it and they gave it back to me the exact way everyone else does."

"Hal--", Olivia snatched the door open to chase after him but caught in Snake's grasp.

"Let him cool off, Olivia."

"I never meant to hurt him. I swear I didn't."

"Why didn't you tell me Hal proposed to you?"

"What? Snake, please, not right now, okay?"

"That's where the ring comes from. It's an engagement ring."

"It kind of doesn't matter right now."

"I just want to know why you didn't tell me."

Olivia squinted her eyes up at Snake as if his face had suddenly changed into something unfamiliar and strange but not particularly pleasing to her.

"Gee, I have no idea. It was on my to do list. I think I saw it right under 'make sure Snake doesn't die today'!" She sighed and lowered her voice. "Look, what do you want me to do? I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth about the ring but I didn't accept his proposal and I really didn't think it was important considering the circumstances. I really screwed up this time, though. I don't think I've ever seen him like that before."

"He'll be okay."

She glanced out the window just in time to see Hal's tail lights fade into two red orbs and disappear completely around a corner.

"I sure hope so."

* * *

Her cell phone was on its second loop of her ringtone by the time it woke her up. She quickly caught a few digits of the time on the clock next to her and looked at the ID caller.

"Hal!" She said but then realized the voice talking to her on the other end wasn't him at all. She sat up. "Yes, this is Olivia...Yeah, I know where that is. I'm on my way."

* * *

Olivia felt the filth and stickiness of the floor sank through the soles of her sneakers and the sweat and smoke seep into her clothing. She glanced around quickly amongst the bodies turning mugs of beer up to their heads or groping the asses of nameless, one night stands of the night but didn't catch any features on any of them that could belong to Hal and for that, she almost found it in herself to be happy.

"Hey, you must be here to get your friend, yeah?"

A true, Scottish accent--the same one she had heard yelling into the phone over the familiar slurred chattering and conversations of the rest of the patrons that she was now hearing in stereo. She looked over behind the bar and saw a round, hard aged face systematically cleaning out a mug and placing it under the counter. Without questioning, she knew it had come from him.

"How'd you know?"

He smirked to his left side, popping a bulge of his cheek out from his face. "Girls like you don't come in here unless they're coming to get someone." He shook the rag off his hand and extended it to her, "I'm Jake. I spoke with you on the phone."

"Olivia. Is he..."

"He's fine." Jake stepped out from behind the counter and began walking in a direction that Olivia immediately could tell she was meant to follow.

Jake's walk reminded Olivia a lot of her own, only his limp had been caused from his body's efforts to effectively carry the large stomach that hung largely over his belt. When she timed their respective gimping just right, she felt like she was paddling a canoe with him through the waves of bodies.

"He's a feisty one, I'll give him that. But maybe his courage came from the wrong place. He about got his scrawny little ass kicked!"

"Get his ass kicked? I thought you said he was fine."

"Oh yeah. He is. Not a scratch on 'em. There were some guys here earlier, some real wankers. Started joshing with him, probably just because they could, ya know? He didn't back down but I could tell he might not live to tell about this night if they had their way with him. So I pulled him out before anyone could touch him, sat him in back, and cut him off for the rest of the night. Guess I should have done that before he got completely sloshed. Poor guy. He's not much of a drinker, is he?"

"No, not really."

"Figures. Doesn't look like it. There's only two things in the world that drives a man like that to drink: the death of a love and a broken heart. I wouldn't wish either one on my worst enemy." He took a key out of his pocket and blindly shoved it into a heavy wooden door. When it opened, Hal immediately fixed his eyes on Olivia and hatched a smile across his face that she knew was heavily doused in alcohol.

"Alright, mate. Your las is here."

"Olivia! I was just telling Jake all about you! Didn't I tell you she was beautiful?"

Jake placed his hand on Hal's shoulder and chuckled a bit without even looking at Olivia's reddening face.

"Aye. That, you did. Now, you go home and sleep off all that shite, okay? He's all yours, Olivia. Ah," he paused before he could open the door again and handed Olivia Hal's keys. "Didn't want him to drive like that so I had to wrestle these away from him."

"Thanks, Jake. For everything. I owe you one."

He nodded and closed the heavy door upon his exit. Olivia looked at Hal, barely able to keep his head in place enough to properly return her gaze.

"Uh oh," he finally said, "You look really, really mad at me."

"I'm not mad. I want you to remember me being mad so I'm not going to tap into that emotion until tomorrow when you're sober. Right now, let's just go home, okay?"

"Okay...wait! No!" The shaking motion of his head hung a few seconds after the 'no', "You...you did this, Olivia. You made everything inside of me...shatter." His face hung for a moment, suddenly moving back into the feeling he had been trying to numb. Olivia knelt next to the chair.

"I want you to know, Hal, that I'll never forgive myself for what you saw earlier. Seeing your face earlier is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do and I'll completely understand if you hate me now."

"I don't hate you. I love you. I could never hate you." Hal threw his arms around her in a hug and Olivia took that moment to raise him out of the chair. Though his feet were moving, Olivia was sure they weren't connected to the rest of him at the moment and had decidedly took on a mind of their own.

Hal leaned his head on the passenger side window of the car as soon when Olivia closed the door after strapping the seatbelt across him.

"Wait...this isn't my car." He said looking around.

"I know. We'll get your car in the morning. It'll be safe until then."

"How'd you know where I was?"

Olivia started up the car and back out and started them on the road back home before answering.

"Well, you must have mentioned my name to Jake and he put two and two together and used your cell phone to call me."

"I told him I was going to drive home. I bet that's why he called you."

"Well, if that's the case I'm even happier that he did."

"You know what I want to do tomorrow?" he said aloud as suddenly as it had come to him.

"You mean besides have the worst hangover of your and my life?"

"I want," he continued, either ignoring her or just not hearing her, "to go to back to Coney Island."

Olivia shook her head. "Hal, you're the only person I know who thinks about getting flipped upside down on a stomach full of alcohol."

His head fell back into the head rest but stayed focused up at the night sky.

"Do you remember when we went to Coney Island?"

"Of course I do. Pretty hard to forget."

"We had so much fun. You let me hold your hand. That's what I remember the most about being there. Not the rides or the lights or all the foods on sticks but getting to feel our hands intertwined." He rolled his head to face her. "Do you remember that?"

"Yeah I do, Hal. Here," she reached behind her to the backseat and produced a water bottle, "see if you can get a few swigs of this down. You'll feel better."

"What is this?"

"It's water."

As Hal lifted the bottle to his mouth, it occurred to Olivia suddenly how large the opening in it was and pulled over the car to the shoulder of the road when she realized more of it was making its way down his shirt than down his throat.

She gently lifted the bottle from his hands and after its exit from his possession registered, he looked over at Olivia.

"Well, that's not the smartest idea I've ever had." She leaned between the two front seats into the back and emerged with a blue beach towel.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get your car wet."

"Forget the car, Hal. It's just water. Besides, the car can't catch a cold. You can."

She flipped a few switches on the front panel and wrapped the towel around his shoulders.

"I just turned the heat on, okay? It should warm up in here in a few minutes."

"Why did you let me hold your hand that night?"

"Huh? Oh, you mean at Coney Island. I don't know. It was dark and crowded and I didn't want the tide of people to separate us."

"Oh."

Olivia tucked a freed piece of hair behind his ear in a silent apology for not saying what she knew he had wanted her to and started the car again to continue on.

Hal still hadn't regained control of his legs by the time they reached the front door of their house and Olivia found her self slinking him up the flight of stairs to his bedroom hitting almost everything that made a racket on the way up.

"This way..." he said and leaned towards Olivia's bedroom door.

"No! Hal...that's not your room. C'mon." She was attempting to whisper, keeping in mind of Snake's regained ability to hear them but it only seemed to make him noisier.

She finally steadied him enough with one arm to open his room door and guide him in, happily closing them off to the rest of the house behind them.

"Careful, Hal." She let go of him when she realized he was headed for his bed and had only turned away for a second before she heard him spill onto the floor, taking a hard clip to the side of his head on a table edge. He laughed as his initial reaction but reached up to hold the side of his head at the same time.

"God! Hal...are you okay? Let me see your head."

"That kinda _really_ hurt..."

Olivia pulled his hand from over the spot it was clasped over and applied a few pokes of pressure to the area until he winced a bit.

"Looks like you caught that table pretty good, Hal. I'm going downstairs to get you some ice. _Don't move_," she stressed, "I'll be right back."

When she walked out into the hallway, Snake was headed her direction.

"What was all the noise?" He asked.

"That was Hal."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's...sloshed." Olivia replied, remembering the way Jake had said it had made it sound a little nicer.

"What? He doesn't even drink..."

"He did tonight. A little too much might I add. He almost beheaded himself a table edge in his room."

Snake followed her into the kitchen. "Is he alright?"

"Yeah, he's fine. He's going to have one hell of a headache though." She grabbed a sandwich bag and dropped a few ice cubes into it.

"Do you need my help with anything?"

"I went to college for 4 years. I learned more about taking care of drunken roommates than I ever did about nursing." She looked down, "Besides, this is my fault."

"It's not your fault."

"Yes it is, Snake!" She paused and put up her right hand to him. "You see this? This is Hal Emmerich's heart and three months ago, on our rooftop, I let him put it on my hand even though I knew he was lying when he told me it wasn't. I knew this ring meant he was still invested in me, still holding out for me come around to him...and I still kissed you." She dropped her hand and head down to the counter. "I couldn't tell him the reason that I'd never be able to give my heart to him was because you already had it but it kind of doesn't matter now, does it? The damage's already done."

"Olivia-"

"I need to get this ice back to him. Excuse me." She said as she slipped out from under Snake's hands on her shoulder.

Olivia knew she'd put the ice pack in the right spot on Hal's head when he flinched again. For the moment, he even seemed sober holding the pack in place and feeling the skull underneath it throb greatly.

"I'm an idiot." He said.

"No, you're not. You're not the first man ever to go out and have too much to drink. It happens and that's why we have hangovers to help us remember what our limits are."

"You don't have to be so nice to me, Olivia. I'm sorry you had to come and get me tonight. It's nearly 3 A.M. You shouldn't have to babysit me."

"Hey, I'm just happy I picked you up from the bar and not the hospital. I was worried about you when you rush off from here earlier."

"I really didn't know where I was going. I just drove into town and that bar was the first place I saw that I felt like stopping at. The worst part is...I can't even remember half of what I drank to get me like this."

"Probably best if you don't. C'mon, let's get you off the floor."

Hal immediately laid backwards once he was on the bed and closed his eyes. Everything that had been churning around him since he had taken the defining shot at the bar finally stood still.

"Hal," he heard Olivia call first and then take both his wrists, "You can't lie down right now, hon. Especially not on your back. Sit up for me."

"Can't I sleep? Just for a few minutes..."

She hoisted him up by his arms and his body formlessly followed up as she pulled him. After a moment of holding him upright, she walked him over to his computer chair and eased him down onto it.

"I just want to go to sleep..."

"I know...but I just want to give your body some time to get that stuff out of your system before you go to sleep." She grabbed Hal's dropped and forgotten ice pack from his bed and brought it back down on his head. Olivia heard him moan in pure misery of his situation. "If it makes you feel any better, I've been here before."

He opened his eyes as she was taking a seat in a nearby chair and scooting it closer to him.

"My second year of college, I decided one night I wanted to test out one of the true staples of it which is ultimately going to an off campus keg party. Well, I enjoyed myself a little too much and for a few years even after I got out of school, I heard stories of this amazing and pretty flexible dance on someone's kitchen counter I did which I still don't quite remember. But, what I failed to remember before actually attending this party was that I had a major, final grade deciding presentation the next day. I thought I was at least kind of safe since it was with a partner and I could just let her carry it while I stood there and tried not to look completely like the walking dead." She laughed. "That didn't exactly work. Teacher failed us both and I caused both of us to do some serious extra credit work to even barely make it out of that class."

He smiled at her. "I can't imagine that."

"Probably a good thing. It wasn't pretty. So, the moral of that story: If you think you feel bad now, wait until morning. I'm gonna go get you some more ice."

When she returned with a fresh pack, before putting it back in place, she ran her hands over his hair and located the bump with her fingers again to check if the size had gone down or not. She lowered her face to Hal's.

"I really hope you don't have a concussion, Hal, but it's hard to tell if you're having any symptoms right now." She sighed. "Poor thing."

Without warning, she felt a forced connection of her lips on his. She immediately pushed him off and pinned him back by his shoulders.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing?"

He grabbed her face in his hands and tried to bring his lips to hers again but she shoved him back and landed a slap across his face that contained more volume than actual force.

"Stop it! What's the matter with you?!"

"You're just like her..."

"Just like who?"

"What do you care?"

He stumbled out of the chair and left Olivia trying to gather the events of the last couple of seconds. She followed his path down the hallway and caught Hal's attempt to open the window to their rooftop sanctuary in the office just as she was about to pass the doorway.

"Hal! Stop it!"

"Get away from me! You're all the same!"

Olivia hooked his waist in her arms and pulled him back but he, to her surprise, over powered her and forced her hold from around him and sent her to the ground. She scrambled madly to get back up when she realized he had the window open and one leg out of it. From nowhere, she caught the breeze of Snake quickly rushing past her to rip Hal from the window sill. After Olivia had reclosed and locked the window, she turned to Hal, fighting and wrestling in vain against Snake's hold.

"Are trying to kill yourself, Hal? What was that--"

"Like you care! You're just like her! You're just like Julie!"

"Who's Julie?"

"Everyone's just fine with breaking my heart but no one ever wants to fix it! And it just keeps breaking over and over and over again and now...and now, I don't have anything left."

Olivia nodded to Snake and he let go of him, letting him settle to the ground like a pebble dropped in water.

"Hal, I'm so sorry I hurt you. I didn't mean to..."

"Everyone says that but no one ever means it. You don't care. No one cares."

She softened her voice as she moved closer to him. "That's not true. I care a lot. You know that."

His eyes started to pour and Snake took that opportunity to leave the room to just the two of them. Olivia reached out for him and gathered him into her embrace. He couldn't suppress his emotions any longer and nothing about the way he felt in Olivia's arms suggested that he should.


	7. Chapter 7

"I wasn't going to jump off the roof."

"Perhaps not but you're in no condition to be climbing up there to sightsee either."

"I just needed somewhere to go to think. How much more of this do I have to drink? I'm starting to feel waterlogged."

"You can stop", she lifted the glass of water from Hal's hand and placed it on the table. "I'm sorry I had to force you to throw up earlier but that's the only way I was going to feel comfortable with you sleeping tonight."

Olivia's voice didn't even hint at the fact that it had nearly been screaming at him an hour before. It was stripped of the steel sharp wit and sarcasm it usually had and replaced with a softness that almost disappeared under the seriousness and concern her eyes carried over it. Hal's head found the pillow next to him and shut out his still spinning world around him. A moment later, he felt his shoes slip off, a blanket drape over him, and a hand smooth over his arm.

"Hal."

"Yes?"

"Who's Julie?"

He wanted to be sleeping right then and even tried to keep his eyes closed in hopes that he'd fade into sudden dreaming. But Olivia watched him intensely, burning her question at him clean through his eyelids.

"I didn't mean to say earlier that you were like her. You're nothing like her." He told her, giving her back her view of his blue eyes.

"But who is she?"

"She's someone that...I thought I loved. A really long time ago."

"An old girlfriend?"

"No, nothing like that."

"Did she hurt you?"

"Olivia," he interrupted the next question forming on her lips, "I know I'll never have you as a girlfriend or a wife but I'd really like to keep you as a friend."

Her face drew up a whole different batch of inquiries. "Of course. Why wouldn't I ever want to be your friend?"

"I've done some really, really horrible things and I'm afraid that if you know about them that you won't want anything to do with me anymore."

"That's ridiculous, Hal," her tone made him feel as if he had just told her he had seen a purple elephant outside the window. "You're pretty much stuck with me."

Against what he thought was his better judgment, he started.

"My mom died when I was 10. My dad was devastated and for nearly 4 years, he wouldn't even think of getting married again. Then, he met Julie Danziger and she made my dad feel like a new man. He married her about a year after they met and adopted her daughter, Emma.

"I became really close with Julie and Emma. I felt like I could tell Julie anything and I loved being a big brother to Emma, looking after her and being someone she could look up to. One day, when my dad and Emma were gone, Julie and I were alone in the house. She started confiding in me, telling me how my father wasn't there for her in the ways she needed him to be. She started crying and so I started comforting her. She looked up at me and we exchanged this deep gaze...and then, we just kissed—the first one I ever had. I was so scared because I knew it was wrong, we both did, but we couldn't help but submit to it. A few months into our affair, when I was 16, I lost my virginity to her. We continued our relationship for over a year until my father committed suicide one day in our pool, almost killing Emma along with him. We both knew he had found out somehow and Julie had a complete turn around with her feelings for me. She said that my father nearly taking Emma with him was a sign that we'd be punished even more if we kept our affair up.

"I was in love with her by then and she couldn't even look at me after that. She barely spoke to me, she'd jump even if she accidentally brushed up against me. That's when I left. I couldn't live in the same house with her knowing she'd never feel what she once did ever again."

Olivia fluttered her gaze away from him and bit her bottom lip. Hal looked down quickly.

"I understand if you're disgusted and don't want anything to do with me anymore. The only other person I told this was Emma...and I didn't even have the guts to do it while she was alive. I know she would have never forgiven me for what I did to her."

She got up from the chair and moved across to the bed to be near him.

"'_Love must be as much a light as it is a flame._' Everyone's ultimate goal in life, more than a successful career or lots of money, whether we realize it or not, is to love and be loved. And sometimes this search is so essential to our happiness and so powerful that we can find ourselves in love with someone in all the ways we know we shouldn't be just to have that feeling. You were a kid, Hal. I don't hate you for taking the only kind of love you knew at the time...and I'm sure Emma wouldn't either."

"Do you really think that?"

She nodded and swept a portion of his hair back off his forehead to land a small peck in its place. "I'll see you in the morning, Hal."

With her permission, Hal's eyes closed under the demand of his body's need for rest and to sleep off the molasses the alcohol had put in his motor skills. When she thought it was safe, she gently took her weight off the bed beside him and shifted a quick glance to the clock. Almost dawn.

As she put her hand on the door knob, the ring on it encircled it with perfect form. She fingered the indentions on it where the emeralds protruded out from and didn't completely realize it wasn't on her hand anymore until she felt her fingers close around it in the palm of the opposite hand. She reopened it to the table next to Hal and paused to see if he offered a slight, even subconscious objection to her action.

But there was nothing.

"All I'll ever do is hurt you, Hal." The words lifted off an exhaled breath next to his ear, "And nothing I do will ever make it better or right. But I refuse to do it while wearing your heart on my hand. It's not right."

When the door closed, Hal's eyes reopened and rolled a look to the table at his back. Without Olivia's finger through it, the ring was just cold metal on his skin again. A thousand intoxicated thoughts ran through his mind, none of which kept still long enough for him to commit to for more than a second, just long enough to bring the sting back to his eyes and leave again.

* * *

_So, there it is. The worst ending I've ever written. I'm really sorry but I really didn't know how to end it...only that I had to. I promise you my next tale, "Rescape" will not be anticlimactic. That's due for release very, VERY soon!! - Andi_


End file.
